Payback, Elizabeth's Style
by Ultracape
Summary: So what was Elizabeth doing all this time while the men in her life were working out their issues with each other prior to getting their acts together and rescuing her? "I mean it, they are all such men."


Payback, Elizabeth's Style

By Ultracape

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or background but I do own the story.

Summary: So what was Elizabeth doing all this time while the men in her life were working out their issues with each other prior to getting their acts together and rescuing her? "I mean it, they are all such men."

She felt rage as she was unceremoniously shoved and lifted into the back of the black van. Yes Elizabeth Burke was afraid for herself, who wouldn't be?

She had been taste testing her special marina sauce, the one that Peter liked the most, the one that could tempt him to eat even when he professed he wasn't hungry. The one she made completely fresh, even using her own homemade tomato paste with produce she'd grown herself in the backyard vegetable patch and herbs from her windowsill kitchen garden. After all home made means, homemade.

Absorbed in her task, she did not realize anything was amiss until she heard a crash and turned to see the kitchen window broken and a dart sticking out of Satchmo's neck as he quietly whined and fell unconscious. It was then that a sack was pulled over her head.

Though surprised, it didn't stop Elizabeth from whipping around and straight arm smacking into her attacker. She kicked out, and smiled as she could tell from the grunts of pain that her aim was true.

Elizabeth had just reached for the sack to remove it from blinding her when she felt an arm pressed around her neck but she followed through with a move Peter had taught her years ago when unarmed combat lessons were a fun date, and flipped the guy over her head. She heard a crash and knew the marinara sauce she'd been working on for the past few hours was history. That was another thing these goons were going to have to pay for if she had her way.

But still blind, Elizabeth did not realize there was a third man in the room. "Come along quietly El, I can call you El, can't I? Or we'll kill the dog. Then we'll start with some of your hair, maybe then a finger, a bit of your ear, and send your husband your body parts, one by one."

"Keller," she breathed out, surrendering, allowing her hands to be secured behind her with handcuffs as rage started pushing away the fear.

"Ah, I'm flattered, my fame proceeds me. Hubby must talk about me a lot, huh."

Elizabeth didn't answer, she'd already said too much by revealing she knew who he was, but then she was smacked across the mouth. "You answer me when I talk to you."

"You hit like a girl," Elizabeth shot back after moving her jaw back and forth a bit.

"I suppose you'd know from when hubby feels the need to tune you up a bit? Huh?"

Elizabeth knew with a certainty that Peter would eat a bullet before he ever thought of laying a hand on her in anger but she pressed her lips together, determined not to say a word. But then she was slapped again and would have been knocked to the floor if it were not for someone big holding her up.

"Fine, you want an answer," she said. "You hurt me and when 'hubby' tracks you down and he will, he won't leave pieces of you big enough to find."

She heard him laugh at that. "Oh, I'm sure he and his lovesick lap con will try. Then again, they may be too busy comforting each other, that's if Petey doesn't kill his boy first for hiding the treasure all this time. You did know that Caffrey is in love with you, or is it your husband, or both, it gets confusing sometimes. I wonder to what lengths Neal would go to ditch Special Agent Burky to end up with you and the treasure? Should be interesting, don't you think?"

From listening to Peter and Neal talk about Matthew Keller all this time, she knew that he wasn't likely to lie but the information feed would be spun in a way to cause her as much pain as possible. Given that, there wasn't a thing he'd said to her that she didn't already know, but she knew a lot more and did not feel inclined to inform Keller of his errors.

The goons who had pulled and pushed and practically carried her out of the house, away from her home, were silent for the long and twisty trip to wherever they were taking her. While her jaw hurt enough that she really didn't feel much in the mood for small talk, it also demanded enough of her attention so that she had not been able to memorize enough of the trip to have any idea of where they were going.

But, on the upside, Elizabeth, praising Mozzie for his friendship and his lessons in lock picking, had disabled the handcuff lock so that while it looked like she was tightly secured, she could be free with just a flick of her wrists.

She knew Keller wasn't riding with them, if for no other reason then he would never have been able to keep his mouth shut, but even in his absence, until she could get the damn sack off her head and had some idea of what she was facing, there was little she could do except concentrate on what she could hear, feel and sense from the trip.

It must have been at least an hour before they got where they were going and Elizabeth was practically carried out of the van, into a building and unceremoniously dumped on to the floor.

She listened carefully as two sets of heavy footsteps left her and she heard a door close and a deadbolt slide home.

Elizabeth sat for a moment, assessing her surroundings and thinking up possibilities. There was light coming in from under the hood on her head but that could mean that she was being watched from a camera. Would Keller have set up surveillance in this room? She didn't know. Yet attributing omnipotence to Keller would only paralyze her, thinking any move she made would be known. Since sitting on her ass wasn't going to do any good she gathered as much information as she could before proceeding.

She didn't hear any breathing or sounds close by so she was pretty certain she was alone. She was also pretty certain that Keller was not around, at least yet, give the lack of hurtful chatter.

First she wiggled the hood off of her head without revealing to any possible camera lens that she could get out of the handcuffs.

Looking around she saw that she was in a bare room with light leaking in from what must have been illuminated signs from a window about 15 feet up.

If there were hidden cameras, Elizabeth did not see them so she flicked her wrists, releasing them from the cuffs and then felt for a small pocket inside the back of her slacks which she had added thanks to warnings given her by Neal one day.

"Always keep a spare phone there," he'd told her. "It can't be seen and anyone trying to rob or mug you isn't going to waste time frisking you," was his very sound advice.

"Do you keep a spare phone there?" she had asked him.

"Uh, no, but it's good for that too," he'd said with one of his special smiles.

And so, Elizabeth simply called 911, told the responder she'd been kidnapped and didn't know where she was. Since they wanted her to stay on the line so they could track her, she asked them also to call her Diana, the only person she was sure would be thinking straight around her husband at this point.

It was barely a half hour later that she had walked through the front door of her home into the very loving arms of her husband who could barely keep the tears from falling as he whispered his love and thanks for her safe return into her ear.

It was just 45 minutes later that Keller after failing to get Peter to turn over Neal with the treasure, walked passed his two hired thugs who were bent over and engrossed in playing angry birds. Bemoaning the quality of help he had to put up with these days, he proceeded on to the back, to the room where he had secured Elizabeth Burke, planning on having a little fun of his own.

He'd barely opened the door when "Surprise," was yelled by a full contingent of pissed off F.B.I. agents led by Neal Caffrey.

With guns pointing at him from all directions, Keller surrendered. "Glad you could make it to the party this time Keller," said Neal. "Very, very glad."

It was a few days later that Elizabeth sat at the head of the table where Peter, Neal, and Mozzie had just polished off a meal featuring her very, very special home made marinara sauce. The men, from just a day after she had come home, were morose, apologizing to her for not being there for her, for not protecting her, for not rescuing her.

Finally, Elizabeth stood up holding a goblet filled with a wine which Neal had picked for the occassion. "

"Gentlemen, here's to you, my husband, my friends, my teachers, without whose concern for my well being, I would never have had the skills and the forethought to survive. Thank you for loving me."

Afterall, they were all such men, and she wouldn't have them any other way.

AN: Just thrown together while I should have been working.


End file.
